1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a surge protector assembly used for protecting electronic appliances in the event of a surge of voltage and, more particularly, to a surge protector assembly suitable for being easily and quickly mounted or replaced with a new one and effectively protecting electronic appliances from instantaneous overvoltage caused by, for example, the striking of a lightning bolt.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In typical electronic appliances such as industrial or home appliances, various electronic elements such as choke coils, resistors, condensers and surge protectors are mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) through a lead wire inserting and soldering process. That is, the electronic elements are preliminarily arranged on a PCB by inserting the lead wires of each element into the wire inserting holes of the PCB prior to soldering the lead wires onto the PCB. In this case, the mounting and soldering of the electronic elements onto the PCB may be achieved manually by a worker or automatically by robotic machinery. Of course, it should be understood that each of the electronic elements may be received in a case, which is screwed to the PCB or engages with a rail provided on the PCB.
FIG. 11 is a sectional view showing a PCB with a varistor used as a surge protector. As shown in the drawing, the PCB 1 is printed with a wiring pattern (not shown) on the top side and has a plurality of lead wire insert holes. The lead wire 2a of the varistor 2 is inserted into a hole of the PCB 1 from the top side to the bottom side prior to soldering the lead wire 2a onto the bottom side of the PCB 1. In the drawing, the reference numeral 3 denotes a solder part formed on the bottom side of the PCB 1. Typically, various electronic elements are mounted onto the top side of the PCB 1 through a soldering process. In the operation of the PCB, one or more electronic elements on the PCB 1 may be adversely affected by overvoltage, overheating or electric shock and often requires replacement of the PCB 1 or replacement of the affected element with a new one. However, in order to replace an affected element with a new one, the affected element has to be removed from the PCB with the solder parts 3 being thermally melted, thus requiring skilled and careful workmanship while replacing the affected element with a new one. Such a replacement of the electronic element is time consuming. In addition, the wiring pattern of the PCB 1 may be thermally affected while the solder parts 3 are heated and melted. In the above PCB 1 with the typical surge protector, it is also difficult to detect breakage or deterioration of the surge protector. Another problem of the above surge protector resides in that a thermally affected electronic element fails to be easily discriminated from other normal elements.
In order to test the surge resisting performance of an electronic appliance with a varistor acting as a surge protector, it is necessary to remove the varistor from the appliance prior to testing and mount the varistor in the appliance through a soldering process after the testing, thus being time consuming.